Listed high among the masters of short story is Russian writer Anton Chekhov. Even if you haven’t read his work, there’s a good chance that you’ve heard of his technique in Chekhov’s gun. Instead of living in mystery, I have decided to finally dig into the author’s work and understand just what makes him an essential voice in the written word. Is he more than a simple gimmick and, if so, what does he have to say about the larger world around him? Like everything I’ve covered in the Short Stop column, his is a series defined by searching bookstores to find whatever speaks to me. At long last, I hope to better understand a name I’ve known seemingly since before I was a writing major but never had context for. Is Chekhov as great as they say? Follow along as I try to see if the payoff is worth the set-up.
Something that is becoming apparent is how much Chekhov wants to explore the topic of mortality. While I can’t suggest that it’s been the central focus of every story so far, there has been some sense of fatalism that underlines every work. In the most explicit example, “A Dead Body” finds people watching over a deceased comrade as they wait for his body to ascend. With “The Dependents,” he returns to the topic with a morbid spin on the topic. For as much as he’s been focused on humanity, this story finds himself shifting to the larger world. While this is the story of an elderly man named Zotov determining whether he should move in with his great-niece, the reader may find a certain outcome more appalling.
On the surface, most 21st century readers are likely to find the demise of the horse and dog to be abhorrent. As for me, it was a fairly predictable outcome that make the early passages even queasier to read. Even if Chekhov found a way to shift this into a feel good narrative (which hasn’t been the case so far), there’s no chance that things work out for Zotov. He’s old and unable to take care of his loyal animal friends. Given that his great-niece doesn’t sound like the type to tolerate two random animals hanging around in the yard, something drastic was going to change by the end of this short, short story.
The longer that I spend thinking about the title, I realize the tragic irony that Chekhov is using to discuss the deromanticization of old age. Whereas Americans have grown up with the notion to “respect your elders,” there is no sense that Zotov has that much to fall back on. The story is mostly ambiguous about his greater life, but there is the sense that he has been ostracized by loved ones and is seeking solace wherever he can find it. At first I assumed that his “dependent” was on the bartender who served as his only source of conversation. However, if he lived with his great-niece, he would be dependent on her.
An interesting subtext regarding the great-niece is how she informs most of the story. For someone who doesn’t appear once, some could read Zotov’s interpretation of the potential hospitality as being the subtext of Zotov’s life. She is described as potentially being hostile towards him, believing that he’s abusing her resources. Similarly, Zotov may be passing his own frustrations down the line. Whereas she is restricting a physical home, Zotov is rejecting shelter for animals who rely on him for food. There is no reason to suggest that Zotov is a bad person for what ultimately happens, but there is this overbearing sadness in him coming to term with the reality that everything is coming to an end.
One could ask why he didn’t just abandon the animals instead of slaughtering them. While it’s true that these creatures could wander until they find something, Chekhov seems to be suggesting that their future is just as dour as Zotov’s. He seems doubtful that anyone would willingly buy them oats let alone serve as a safe space. Given that the suggestion of turning them into meat carcasses comes up a few times, it seems likely that he notices their mortality along with his and is trying to find ways to stop the worst from happening. They’re all doomed, but their fate is much more imminent.
Chekhov does a phenomenal job of conveying the similarities between the elderly and the animal world. Without discussing the familiar themes of economics and that everyone must work for their livelihood, he captures the tragedy of becoming disabled and not fitting into the equation. The idea of freeloaders is a subject he suggests that Russia frowns upon, and nobody needs that in the human world more than Zotov. In the years where he should be riding out his final years in peace, he is left recognizing how hostile everything might be. His great-niece may take him in, but there will be some resentment. The communication will cease to exist and soon he’s left with his own malnutrition.
While the story ruminates on this moral quandary, Chekhov opens the story with something much more curious. Following a description of Zotov waking up around five, he recalls a dream that he’s just awaken from. The simplicity of a stove wouldn’t be enough to alarm the reader at first. It may seem like a banal subject to emphasize, but Chekhov is quick to emphasize why the stove is a haunting image. Before the sentence is over, he suggests that “a stove is a sign of sorrow.” Given that the previous paragraph discussed his fragile body, it would be easy to foreshadow something terrible coming once he walks out of his house.
An experience that I’ve had is that a dream can ruin your day. Despite being a complete work of fiction, the right ideas can spiral me into deep thought and wonder why that’s what my brain has fixated on. Suddenly it’s impossible to engage with the real world because I have to hold onto this fleeting idea and understand what it’s saying. The more morbid it becomes, the likelier I am to feel isolated. Given that Chekhov is compelled to write about death, I’m more than confident that Zotov is lost in the thought of this sorrowful image. Is this his mind’s way of telling him that life is coming to an end? He never addresses it with anybody else, but it does seem like it bothers him as he recognizes the miseries that lay ahead.
If I really wanted to, I could ask what was so morbid about the stove. Was there something in Zotov’s life that drew him to this perplexion? Outside of digging into any larger cultural metaphor that stoves symbolize, I will choose to assess the universal function. A stove is a source of comfort but also misery. It can keep somebody warm. However, making it too hot or cold can result in health concerns. Similarly, stoves can provide food and thus is a necessary tool for survival. Zotov doesn’t actually discuss what the stove is doing, but one can safely assume that it’s dysfunctional.
Given the larger theme of feeding the dog and horse, I’m willing to think that the stove symbolizes a character’s use being reduced to consumption. They will be fried up and fed to others in order to serve some larger value. It’s not a noble death but is pretty much the only thing Zotov can do at his age. It seems more likely that the animals will meet this fate, but it’s still a nerve-racking sentence to parse and try to understand Chekhov’s larger point.
This also parallels with his four-legged samovar, which has begun humming. As he wishes bad luck upon it, there is yet another allusion to kitchenware symbolizing death. In this case, it reads like the soul leaving the body before becoming absolutely corrupted. Zotov’s world is filled with rundown architecture. His only escapism is found in his mind where he contemplates his dreams. There is a disengagement that makes it hard to understand why he would want to live in this world, especially without the one thing that still works: his relationship with the dog and horse.
As is true with the best of literature, Chekhov’s sympathy for the animals is the real heart of this story. He never personifies them and instead relies on their cute little instincts to follow Zotov and reflect a friendliness that is earned over years. There is a history with this simple movement that makes it hard to know that something bad is on the horizon. They are doomed to go the way of the stove as they lose their identity and quickly become forgotten.
So why does Zotov decide to kill the animals? In a greater world, they would be able to roam free with the guarantee of safety. However, Zotov recognizes how cruel the world is. Even his future with his great-niece isn’t likely to be smooth sailing. Their death is less out of selfishness and more out of mercy. It’s the act of a desperate man who is pushed to his limits and discovering that some decisions will never be easy to make. Some could argue that the animals could’ve lived and wandered the village, but would it be a satisfying life? Maybe everything would be more miserable or even less humane than what he did. He couldn’t stand to imagine them starving and sleeping in shabby conditions. As painful as it is, it can be read as an act of love.
If there’s any silver lining in the story, it’s that Chekhov writes Zotov with a sense of humanity that shines through the difficulties. The decision hurts him so much that the story ends with his head on the chopping block. Having seen his beloved companions now gone from this earth, it seems unlikely that he has anything to live for. This is it. He’s alone in the world.
The cruelty is a powerful plot device that emphasizes Chekhov’s view on mortality within the larger economic system. Once somebody has served their purpose, they are to be extracted from the earth. First to go is the samovar, then the animals, then the humans. It feels like a slow decline into barbarianism and one that removes any sense of humanity. Thankfully, Zotov never loses it, though it comes at the cost of caring too much for the world around him. Whereas everyone has found ways to move on, he may never recover from this moment. He’s seen his fate played out in it own abstract way. Much like in “Easter Eve,” Chekhov’s playful ambiguity is what elevates this seemingly appalling act into something more unnerving.
As someone who has had to put down a pet in the past year, I found the reading especially difficult. While I didn’t have to watch them be defiled in the ways that “The Dependents” explores, the idea of seeing an animal pass before your eyes is a very difficult thing to process and, for me at least, took a long time to cope. Just because I don’t call this my favorite Chekhov story shouldn’t discredit how much this got under my skin and made me deeply uncomfortable. It’s a simple story that hits the marks perfectly, reflecting on ideas that feel a bit repetitive at this point but done in ways that show him thinking about the world writ large. It’s clever in its own morbid ways. Unlike his other interpretations of death so far, this is not for the faint of heart. Take heed before starting. It may be short, but the feeling that lingers is unlike anything else Chekhov has written.
Coming Up Next: “Grisha”
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